


Trespasses

by Morbane



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Animal Abuse, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Gen, Origin Story, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 14:04:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4524798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Narnia's first days, Jadis delighted in twisting Aslan's purposes and promises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trespasses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



When the Tree that was to be the Shield of Narnia put out roots, branches and leaves, Jadis knew it, although she was far from the site of its sowing, for the wind that blew from the East that evening was cloying and noisome to her. It smelled sweet, not as a honey-flower may be sweet, or a strengthened wine, but like something burnt and burning, acidic and corruptive.

She who had been Empress turned away from the wind and walked West and North, farther still.

Among the hills, the breezes turned and scattered. She no longer felt as though the Lion breathed on her, but Aslan's voice still echoed in the valleys. Grass was succeeded by groves. The birds that flew up from the undergrowth had come into being there moments earlier. For spite, Jadis snatched a small, feathered creature from the air and dashed the breath from it, pleased that in its first moments it should know pain. She ground it back into the mud, its cradle to become its grave.

But as she watched, the spawning spirit still present in the soil renewed the creature. Though it was misshapen, it struggled up again, accusing her with shrill cries.

Jadis smiled.

While that force still flourished in the land, she re-made such of Aslan's creatures who crossed her path: shaped their claws and teeth, lengthened their limbs. They were unlovely, but she made their lacks her gain. She taught them to hurt each other, and hunt each other, to eat each other and fear each other, and most of all, to fear her.

In that, she came close to the limits of what she could teach them. Even when the land no longer gave back life as easily as it had been taken, there was a certain malleability to Aslan's creations. Those who could be trained to glimpse cause and effect seemed sometimes to grasp at other things, and she encouraged them. But most reasoning exceeded their grasp. Except in the throes of savagery, they were poor entertainment and dull company. Jadis sat on a rough throne and watched her creatures fight each other, and wondered if such barbarism suited her dignity.

It was tedium rather than temper that at last moved her to bring her followers South and East, to discover how Aslan's Narnians had fared. Sending her beasts out to scout and attack gave the undertaking a purpose hopeful of reward - for there would be little that was joyful in discovering the workings of the Tree of Narnia, if it had the power Aslan had boasted it would have.

She was prepared to that discover Aslan's ban held - though she vowed it would not hold forever.

However, a different thing disquieted her on the journey. As she and her followers travelled, from the coldest ranges of the mountains into sharp but more verdant valleys, through thick woods and over plains, the sense of oppression grew, and the air sapped her strength. That, she had predicted. But at last there came a time when Aslan's charm beat at her from two directions - from Narnia itself, and also from the far West, where she had stood on Narnia's second day.

'So he has turned that Garden against me,' Jadis mused.

She concealed her anger. Her followers were unaware of any bane. They understood only what she had hinted and promised to them: new fruits and new prey. They had not trespassed against Aslan - yet. They had no fear of the Garden or the Shield-tree.

On the cliffs above the Great Waterfall, she made her camp, and sent her beasts on before her. She had not permitted them to eat in the last days of their journey. Some, she knew, would fall upon each other the moment they were out of her sight. Others would wander aimlessly, forgetting her commands. But yet others would taste Narnian blood, and from those, fewer yet, who met Narnians and returned, she would learn much.

So she waited, and when the wind brought howling, she was pleased to wait.

Some returned to her sated and complacent, with bloody claws and bulging stomachs. Some came limping and defeated, showing only their own blood; but the best reward came from the latter, for Narnians came chasing them - Falcons stooping from the sky and Leopards leaping up the cliffs - and those she caught and bound.

Her followers slavered after her captives, but she restrained them. It was merry to hear speech at last, though she punished her captives' curses and defiance as suited her pride. One leopard she broke to ride; the Falcons, too, might be trained to a purpose. But for now, she leashed and hooded them, surrounded them with lesser creatures, and taunted them to teach these beasts to talk as they did.

When this pleasure, too, waned, she considered what conclusions she could draw from this campaign, and some were sour. It was satisfying to send scourges to harry the Narnians, but if she could not follow after them, she would either limit herself to petty harms, or - worse - should her army be successful, it would either spoil or rule the land without her. 

No. This would not do.

Despite her cruel treatment of them - despite how surely she commanded them, and easily punished them - the beasts that followed Jadis were first Aslan's creations, and something of that nature remained. There was an innocence in their savagery that she had delighted in; now it displeased her. 

For that, she had a remedy.

She withdrew for a time to the North. She built up her forces, both in numbers and in purpose, for the promises she whispered to them were subtler now. When she led them to battle a second time, it was to the West, not the South, that she travelled.

Generations of Jadis' beasts had drunk in tales of the Garden where grew the fruits of satisfaction and strength; fruits that granted wishes and power. Generations had been nurtured in envy and fear, in lack and competition, so as to shape those wishes toward selfishness and destruction. Each beast thought that Jadis did not know its darkest hopes - but she knew them all, and welcomed them.

Jadis' army came to the green hill and the golden gates, and swarmed over the walls so thickly that green turned to muddy black, and the legend on the gates was obscured. They rioted among the trees and flower-bushes within, and, from the nearest hill, Jadis threw a spear that pierced the bird-guardian of the Garden between its first and second cry of alarm.

They ate unstinting, and as they ate, they changed. Some beasts who had come of dog-shape grew larger than natural wolves; some beasts who had seen Narnians, and their rulers, received the fulfilment of their wishes by taking on some of the features of Men. That day were born giants and ghasts, hags and were-wolves and lamias, and many creatures whose thirsts are slaked only by blood.

As more and more of Jadis' army joined the frenzy, the very walls crumbled beneath them, and the gates were ground down into the ground. Branches were stripped bare, and then themselves consumed; what fruits remained were crushed in the struggle. It is certain that much of value was lost; yet there was a profit, too, to the waste. No other Apple would come from this garden. No other creature would receive the wish of their heart.

Jadis' followers did at last grow tired of their destruction - when there was nothing but themselves left to destroy. Many would have sought her again, but they did not find her. She had hidden herself in the hills. A long time after they had scattered, she stood on the ground they had despoiled. She rejoiced in its obliteration: the leaves and fruit and flesh all pulped together.

That day many legends had their birth, but for a long time after, Jadis too was a legend, showing her face rarely in that land. She was cautious of the powers claimed by those who had followed her - for now. She was certain she could outlast them, and subjugate them, for Jadis was immortal, and the strongest of those who had come into their own that day would die.

For a time, she kept no company at all, but studied Magic alone in the northernmost reaches of the world.

In later times - at least once every decade, in her long existence - it pleased her to return to the bare ground that stood ever at the end of a clear lake, and remember what had fallen there at her command; and it pleased her to ignore the faint breeze that sometimes blew from behind her, or around her, though indeed it was so faint it might almost be a memory, or hearken from another place entirely: a place, however, where nothing had been destroyed.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you, h, for your suggestions! I apologise for not incorporating them more fully, but I am grateful.


End file.
